Hireath

In my life, I have died three times.

The first time, when I was seven, I drowned. For five long minutes, my heart refused to beat as my father tirelessly beat my chest. Three ribs cracked under his heavy hands. Finally, the water emerged from my bruised lungs and lined my throat with coarse, painful salt. For the rest of my life, I would feel the sharpness of it, how the crystals grinded against each other and left me raw as I spoke.

The second time was in bed with the man I would marry, though neither of us knew that yet. We were teenagers, fumbling and awkward, and despite this I managed to experience what the French call “le petit mort”. The little death. Never before and never after have I known it. This is uncommon, I’ve heard, but it’s not uncommon to me. I can’t say it bothers me. You can’t miss what you don’t know. Or maybe you can. There’s a Welsh word for that, I think. Hireath. Longing for something that does not exist. It was the only time in my life I’ve done something forbidden. After our marriage it was all clean and okay-ed by families and God. It no longer charmed me. That’s why marriage should never come early, if you ask me. Young adults want mystery and thrills, not dinner at six PM and pleasant Sunday evening intercourse. Normalcy should come after disruption. 

It didn’t take me long to get pregnant. A curse upon my fertile genes and child-bearing hips. But still, I smiled and carried on. That’s what you must do, even when you want to cry with your raw throat. I made the six PM dinners and participated in the Sunday evening sex. But only for as long as I did not show, sex with a visibly pregnant woman is unseemly. I kept a diary these eleven months when we were married, nice little notes at first. The funny thing about journaling is how performative it is. I have never been able to actually write what I want to write, because what if someone finds it? What if I’m being too honest? No one likes to see, black ink on white paper, a mirror of their innermost self. You are not as lovely as you think you are. So I cleaned myself up, made my annoyances endearing. But then what is the point of a diary? The salt engulfing my throat engulfed the pages, distorting my words into something palatable. But as the months progressed, I couldn’t be bothered to lie. On one page, only dark, hard scribbles. They tore through the page, made marks on the next. On another, I hate him I hate him I hate him. That was actually a lie, but not in the moment. I don’t know what the poor thing had done to deserve my written-down wrath. Maybe he forgot to buy the right kind of chocolate bar. I did not hate him, but I never loved him. I don’t think he loved me either, but his parents were as traditional as mine. Unlike me, he tried to make the best of a bad situation. Maybe he even began to believe he liked it. 

The last days of my pregnancy, I filled nine pages with hireath hireath hireath.

The third time I died was tonight, after hours and hours of clinical smells and rubbery flavours. You know how you sometimes can tell what something will taste like just by looking? Everything at a hospital looks like it’s rubber-flavoured. Sometimes it’s metal, but it’s always cold. The sheets were crinkled beneath me, and I wanted to ask a nurse to stretch them out. But I could not speak. I have never seen such a quiet mother, I heard a nurse whisper to another as I pushed and pushed and pushed. I cannot yell, I wanted to yell. I have not been able to since I was seven and almost drowned. 

Something was wrong, we realized, one by one. It should not take this long. Even for a first, not very enthusiastic mother like me. And I was getting tired. When people see red, they mean that they are angry, but that’s wrong. Red is pain. I saw red. I only saw it, because I had stopped feeling it hours ago. My body took pity on me and made me numb. My husband was there, holding my hand. I found this very kind of him, since we didn’t even love one another. He did not have to do that. I didn’t even notice when they cut me open.

I saw myself from above. My damp, stringy hair. My gaunt face, puffy and red with exhaustion. All over me a sheen, a thin film of sweat. I have never looked less attractive, I thought, and was overcome with a mad desire for myself. I was the novelty I seeked. It felt a little like being drunk, subdued in a foamy cloud. My husband was there, holding my hand. He was so young, yet from above I saw the patch of skin on his head where he would soon be bald. In my arms, a wrinkly little thing. So tiny, I could hardly believe all this fuss had been about this little raisin. I thought it pretty macabre, that they would put a newborn into his dead mother’s arms. Even in death, no woman is free. But I should feel bad, thinking that. He did not ask to be born. 

He was clean, they had washed him before putting him to my breast. Like the pages of my diary, he was performative. Cleaner and prettier and more palatable than reality. I wish they had smeared him all over my dead chest. Let the world be ugly and disruptive, just this once. Do you not understand how much you appreciate cleanliness once you have been dirty? Dirt is my legacy. And my son, he will inherit my hireath, for he will go without a mother for the rest of his life, and he will always long for something that does not exist.